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Holidays in Hell
Australian travel companies report that thousands of tourists due to fly out for holidays on the beaches of the Indian Ocean and the Andaman Sea have cancelled, deferred or amended their plans in the past couple of weeks. Of those, the indications are that relatively few have pulled the pin entirely - most opting for a shift in timing or location.
But new bookings betray the fickle nature of tourists, the fodder for an industry worth $US7.9 billion ($A10.4 billion) a year. The short-term impact is unequivocal - the international bookings agency Abacus recorded drops of 44 per cent and 46 per cent respectively in Sri Lanka and Thailand on December 28. (Curiously, bookings to Indonesia, India and Malaysia nudged up the same day.) Abacus chief Don Birth confidently predicts full recovery within a year, but others aren't so sure.
Whether the real or perceived erosion of the vacation idyll will - or should - keep travellers away in the longer term is now a topic of keen debate between economists and politicians, travel agents and holiday makers.
How hard will the backwash of the tsunami hit regional economies? In 2003, tourism to the 12 countries struck by the wave brought in 31 million visitors and $US23 billion ($A30.3 billion), according to the World Tourism Organisation. And what is the right thing for the responsible traveller to do - go ahead with the fantasy honeymoon or holiday in Thailand, or go to Queensland instead? Sri Lanka or unscathed Sabah?
Jeff Jarvis, a Monash University academic and tourism industry researcher whose particular interest is how the largesse of Western tourists impacts on developing countries, has no doubt. "This is a time for people to be foot soldiers for development aid - to get off the sofa and book their next holiday to Thailand or Sri Lanka," he says. "To support the people in the bar and selling T-shirts on the beach and working in the restaurants."
Jarvis, director of the graduate tourism program at the National Centre for Australian Studies at Monash, argues that tourism is a major force of development worldwide - and becoming ever more important. "People don't realise what happens to the money they spend on holiday. That for them to go and spend a couple of thousand dollars in a developing country would be the equivalent of someone spending tens of thousands of dollars in Australia. Tourism can be a vital weapon in the war against poverty."
Australia 8/1/2005
